#Hose bib smart timer full size

A guide roller at the reel moves back and forth as the hose retracts, guaranteeing that the hose spools on evenly, not all in one lump. It’s 82 feet of hose on an enclosed reel that pulls out easily and retracts on its own after a slight tug, like a window blind. The Hoselink 82ft Retractable Hose Reel offers a simple way to manage a lot of hose with minimal effort. And we confirmed in testing in 2021 that a new Gilmour nozzle was still as solid and reliable as the units we had bought years prior. We’ve been using versions of this tool for the better part of a decade, taking horrible care of them all the while (they still work fine). That doesn’t matter much when you’re washing the car (which the Gilmour nozzle is perfect for), but the Gilmour can be frustrating to use when you’re trying to water small container plants: You’re likely to spray water everywhere, and when you’re correcting that, you might shoot a beam of water at the base of a plant, blasting dirt and damaging roots.

You can adjust a setting screw to customize this range slightly, but it’s nowhere near as targeted as the settings on the Melnor XT451. Instead, when you depress the trigger, you get a range of sprays-from a mistlike cloud at minimal pressure up to a forceful jet when the trigger is fully depressed. This tool contains none of the plastic parts common to competitors in its price range, and it lacks the familiar rotating wheel of spray settings.

#Hose bib smart timer full size

The classic Gilmour Full Size Zinc Pistol Grip Nozzle is a longtime Wirecutter recommendation that further proves six or seven bucks is plenty to spend for a satisfying hose nozzle, as long as you’re willing to make a concession or two. This pick replaces the Melnor 5-Pattern Watering Nozzle 301-416, which has had a lot of leaking issues in our experience (including a specific event when it leaked and drained Wirecutter senior staff writer Doug Mahoney’s well completely dry). Compared with six other nozzles we recently tested, the XT451 not only felt the most durable but also had a spray that was simply better: The shower setting was a perfect shape with hardly any spitting, the jet setting shot water the farthest, and we never saw any dripping out of the front of the nozzle. It has seven spray patterns that run the gamut from a car-rinsing jet stream to a mist that can water even the most delicate seedlings. The XT451 has a hefty metal body with a hard rubber padding at the grip area (the spraying nozzle itself is plastic). You can find a lot of similar nozzles, but this Melnor model stands out due to its durable construction and its good variety of spray patterns, as well as how nicely it sprays. We have a test unit that has been doing fine after two years of intermittent use and daily Southern California sun exposure.įor a full-featured hose nozzle that can shower delicate flowers just as well as it can blast the mud off a truck tire, we recommend the Melnor XT451 Metal Nozzle. Its two-year warranty is reassuring, too though we’ve heard of some HoseCoils lasting longer, hitting the two-year mark is about what we’d expect.

As with our heavier-duty picks, the HoseCoil’s nozzle end has flat facets for a wrench to grab. Although the HoseCoil’s total length is 25 feet, in practice it’s really good for only about 17 feet before it starts to strain. Compared with our bigger picks, this ⅜-inch-diameter hose loses a quarter-inch of capacity, which translated to slightly lower water pressure in our side-by-side trials. The HoseCoil’s main selling point is its retractable corkscrew design, which works as advertised in making the hose easy to extend, recoil, and store. The HoseCoil ⅜-inch Self Coiling Garden Hose (25 feet) is neither as tough nor as long as our other picks, but for a small patio, balcony, or yard-where dragging around a big 50-footer feels like overkill-it’s a fine alternative. It’s available in a variety of sizes, and Eley can even make custom lengths. But if you have trouble hefting a heavier hose or if you just want to simplify and eliminate as many of the daily micro-frustrations of a garden hose, this Eley hose is very much worth considering.

With all of these high points, this Eley hose doesn’t come cheap-costing roughly $110 for a 50-foot length, it’s certainly an investment. The brass fittings at the ends are large and easy to tighten by hand or wrench, and it comes with a 10-year warranty (twice as long as the coverage that Eley offered on its discontinued rubber hose). Compared with quality rubber hoses like the Continental and the Dramm, the Eley is lighter (much lighter), easier to loop, and more durable, and it seems immune to any kind of folding or kinking. It’s the best hose we’ve ever handled, and after using it for a while, we came to see all other hoses, including our other picks, as cumbersome, primitive, and dysfunctional. The Eley 5/8-inch Polyurethane Garden Hose was a revelation to us.